Howdy, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Masa, one of the volunteers for Benkyoukai. First of all, below is the basic information about Benkyoukai. Benkyoukai is a language exchange event where people practice English and Japanese. It takes place at JP Canada’s office from 5:45pm to 7:00pm every Wednesday. Everyone’s language level interestingly varies from […]

Hi everyone, I’m Jolena and I’m one of the volunteers at Benkyoukai. So what is Benkyoukai? Benkyoukai, or Study Night, is a language exchange event that connects English and Japanese speakers through the form of activities and conversation. Sign-in starts at 5:45pm every Wednesday at JP Canada‘s office (#320 – 890 West Pender St) and […]

This time, we had a different type of activity. We focused on a Japanese New Year’s traditional activity called “Kakizome/書き初め(かきぞめ)”. At the beginning of the year, people write calligraphy known as kakizome; they create works symbolizing their wishes for the new year. In Japan, we usually have calligraphy classes in elementary school. So everyone has basic […]

For this week’s activity, I picked some “words/sayings with colours in them”. Yes it sounds weird so why don’t we move on to the questions we had, which will be self-explanatory. Out of the        : unexpected         with envy: jealous or envious Caught        -handed: clearly guilty         noise: static noise         Friday: the day after […]

  This week, We did a very difficult activity that requires high level of English and Japanese. This activity includes answering riddles and translating the questions. It seemed the questions themselves were already very hard. Here is a list of questions that we did for this activity. Please give a shot, if you have time […]

This time, music(音楽/おんがく) was the theme of the activity. Do you like listening to music? Music is needed for a change to refresh and relax in your free time. And I mustn’t forget to mention Karaoke(カラオケ)!! Karaoke was invented in Japan and now it is popular all around the world. I am so proud of it! […]

Hi everyone, I’m Haruka. I’m one of volunteer at Benkyoukai and I’m so excited to be working with you from now on! Let me tell you all about myself. I’m a Japanese speaker from Tokyo and I’ve been in Vancouver for 6 months. I’m having a lot of fun studying English and business in college. […]

This week, we had everyone discuss “Festivals and Culture”. Each country has different events/ideas they celebrate/ appreciate/commemorate. Japan and Canada have quite an interesting contrast in this area. I have provided a worksheet with some festivals (some are holidays some aren’t) to start with (see below.) For this post, I’m going to pick one from […]

    Now, it’s time to review this week’s activity. This week, we a the lyrics quiz. Participants were given lyrics and had to answer the name of the song from which they came. For the first part, Japanese lyrics were taken from Japanese songs, and English lyrics from English songs. However, the second part […]

  Hello everyone!. Before telling you about this week’s event, let me introduce Study Night (Benkyokai). Benkyokai is a language exchange event between English and Japanese speakers.  It is held at JPCanada’s office (#320 890 West Pender street) from 5:45 pm to 7:00 pm every Wednesday. For the first 15 minutes, participants have friendly conversations […]

“Self-introduction”. Apparently this is very Japanese thing, but in Japan when group of people get together they are highly likely to present a “self-introduction” consisting of your name and some relevant (or irrelevant) information about yourself to each other. In Vancouver, this kind of activity could happen in an ESL class, but outside of that it […]

Now, let’s look at this week’s activity. The topic was hospital conversations(病院での会話). Have you never gone to hospital? No? That is good. However, people can’t always be healthy. What if you felt ill in another country? You would need to go to see a doctor. It is crucial to understand questions from a doctor and […]

I know many of you like to watch Netflix and movies on your down time, so for Study Night this week I chose to cover the topic of “Talking about Movies”. To start off, I wanted this not only to be a study session to learn about *How* to talk about your movie interests in Japanese, […]

Recently at work, I came across the topic of personality by blood-typing with my Japanese co-workers and I thought it would be an interesting topic to discuss. So for this week’s 149th Study Night, I chose the topic of personality, or “性格せいかく” . Before getting into that topic, I wanted to do an exercise on […]

If you’re thinking of studying Japanese, why not do so in Japan’s most liveable city?  Kobe is a great place to experience both sides of the country’s culture: tradition and modernity.. Lexis Japan offers two types of intensive Japanese programmes: full-time(25h/week) and part-time (15h/week.)  To make things better, they also offer monthly cultural activities! About […]

The topic for this week’s activity was tongue twisters. These are made by words which sounds similar to one another, and confuse you as you say them. Yet, because they consist of similar sounding words, they are good for pronunciation practice! I found some tongue twisters from both Japanese and English. Can you say them […]

  Hello everyone!. Before telling you about this week’s event, let me introduce Study Night (Benkyokai). Benkyokai is a language exchange event between English and Japanese speakers.  It is held at JPCanada’s office (#320 890 West Pender street) from 5:45 pm to 7:00 pm every Wednesday. For the first 15 minutes, participants can have a […]

This week we played a game called Spyfall. It’s a game where people have to find out who the spy hiding among them is, while the spy needs to figure out the location that the rest of the people are trying to keep hidden from him/her. You probably have no idea what I am talking […]

  Hello everyone. This is Bob. In  southern Japan the rainy season has started. We call the rainy season “tsuyu(梅雨つゆ)”. It normally starts in May and ends July. However it depends on region. In southern Japan it starts earlier and in northern Japan it starts later. Hydrangeas bloom in “梅雨つゆ“. Hydrangeas in the rain are […]

This time, National holidays(国民の休日／こくみんのきゅうじつ) were the focus of the activity. Do you know how many national holidays there are in Japan and Canada? What are those holidays for? Of course we can enjoy holidays without thinking about their meaning. However, if you know about what they are for, you can not only enjoy them but […]

This time, Japanese-English words(“和製英語/わせいえいご”) were the focus of the activity. When English words get around Japan, their meaning frequently changes. These false friends can cause miscommunication. In order to prevent this, let’s study how Japanese-English word depart from their original meaning. In the first part, we translated Japanese-English words. Here are some examples we looked […]

First, what we did yesterday was あいうえお作文 さくぶんand かるた.  So I’m going to show you what あいうえお作文 is. Here’s one example.  お題だい「おかあさん」The topic「mother」 あ　ありがとう  Thank you い　いつも  always う　美うつくしい beautiful え　笑顔えがおの smiling お　お母かあさん mother It’s a message for mother’s day showing appreciation to mothers. Usually we make あいうえお作文 related to one topic and  it should […]

Yesterday, Yokoso Japan Association together with JP Canada and Moii cafe hosted a fundraising event for Kumamoto to try to raise funds for the recent earthquake disaster on April 14th and 16th.  I wanted to give a big thank you to everyone that joined the event, everyone that donated to the cause and everyone that […]

Hi everyone, this is Yuka from Yokoso Japan Association. This year, I went to visit Japan in April. I just missed the Sakura season last year at the end of March so I decided I have to come back in April. My trip was mostly for vacation but I heard GenkiJACS was opening a new school […]

  Have you ever thought about drawing manga as a profession? As a hobby? Have you drawn before or are you a beginner? There is a Manga drawing workshop in Tokyo where you can learn how! It is tailored toward beginners but all levels can learn a thing or two. They offer different classes on […]